Marriage and Family
Broyard first married Aida Sanchez, a black Puerto Rican with whom he had a daughter Gala. They divorced after Broyard returned from military service in World War II.
In 1961 at the age of 40, Broyard married again, to Alexandra (Sandy) Nelson, who was a modern dancer and a younger woman of Norwegian-American ancestry. He was indirect about his family, but she learned about him. They had two children, Todd, born in 1964, and a daughter Bliss, born in 1966. The Broyards raised their children as white in suburban Connecticut. When they were young adults, Sandy urged Broyard to tell them about his family (and theirs), but he never did.
Shortly before he died, Broyard wrote a statement which some people later took to represent his views. In explaining why he so missed his friend the writer Milton Klonsky, with whom he used to talk every day, he said that after Milton died, "No one talked to me as an equal." Although critics framed the issue of Broyard's identity as one of race, Broyard wanted equality and acceptance: he wanted neither to be talked down to nor to be looked up to, as either masked the true human being.
Sandy told their children of their father's secret before his death. Broyard died of prostate cancer, diagnosed in 1989. His first child and oldest daughter, Gala, was not acknowledged in his New York Times obituary.
Read more about this topic: Anatole Broyard
Famous quotes containing the words marriage and/or family:
“Every relationship that does not raise us up pulls us down, and vice versa; this is why men usually sink down somewhat when they take wives while women are usually somewhat raised up. Overly spiritual men require marriage every bit as much as they resist it as bitter medicine.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Views of women, on one side, as inwardly directed toward home and family and notions of men, on the other, as outwardly striving toward fame and fortune have resounded throughout literature and in the texts of history, biology, and psychology until they seem uncontestable. Such dichotomous views defy the complexities of individuals and stifle the potential for people to reveal different dimensions of themselves in various settings.”
—Sara Lawrence Lightfoot (20th century)